17-09-2012, 13:43
online listen
I double dog dare ya
the whole album without nodding off
nothing close to a like for me
the clip, so stupid
dude finished that drink each time he tipped it
not my thing but it may be yours
1.0 from me and a converted 2.4 from the pros at allmusic
from the album - You Will Be Here, Mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrarWj7yW6k
released Sept 11th, 2012
![[Image: 51crOo-ysFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51crOo-ysFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)
Bio - from allmusic
Will Johnson is one of the most prolific artists in American indie rock; while he's best known as the leader of the
group Centro-Matic, he also fronts the band South San Gabriel, has recorded a number of solo projects, and has
served as a sideman and producer for a handful of other noted acts, and he's released close to 40 records with his
various ensembles outside of the dozens of compilations that have included his work. Johnson was born in Kennett,
Missouri in 1971, and he developed a passion for rock & roll as a teenager, going so far to learn the guitar, bass,
and drums parts to two of his favorite albums, the Replacements' Let It Be and Soul Asylum's Hang Time. After
completing high school, Johnson relocated to Denton, Texas to attend the University of North Texas, where he took a
double major in English and elementary education. Johnson began making a name for himself as a drummer, and in 1991
he joined a Dallas-based band called Funland. Funland were successful enough that Johnson quit school for a while to
keep up their schedule, and they were briefly signed to Arista Records, who released the EP Sweetness in 1995.
Within a few months of the record's release, Johnson had returned to Denton to complete his degree, and he began
recording moody solo compositions on a four-track cassette machine. He credited the material to "The Centro-Matic
Band," and his early self-released cassette albums began attracting positive attention in the local press. By 1996,
the first proper Centro-Matic album, Redo the Stacks, had appeared, and the solo project had grown into a proper
band with Mark Hedman on bass, drummer Matt Pence, and Scott Danborn on bass and keyboards. Centro-Matic released
two cassette-only collections, four 7" singles, two EPs, and six albums between 1996 and 2001, and the group earned
a passionate cult following for their richly evocative music and Johnson's powerful, literate songs. In 2002,
Johnson released his first solo album, Murder of Tides, and in 2003 he debuted South San Gabriel, which featured the
same musicians as Centro-Matic but offered a more measured and contemplative musical approach. As both Centro-Matic
and South San Gabriel continued to receive acclaim from critics and fans, Johnson began collaborating with a growing
number of artists. He played guitar with Anders Parker's band Varnaline, drummed with Jay Farrar's Son Volt, formed
the Undertow Orchestra with David Bazan, Vic Chesnutt, and Mark Eitzel, and toured with the all-star indie-folk
ensemble Monsters of Folk. Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, an avowed Centro-Matic fan, recruited Johnson to
sing backing vocals on the band's 2008 album Brighter Than Creation's Dark, and when Hood released his 2009 solo
effort Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs), Johnson appeared on the record and toured in Hood's live band. In
2011, after Centro-Matic released the album Candidate Waltz, Johnson was invited to collaborate in a special
project; Johnson, Farrar, Parker, and Yim Yames (of My Morning Jacket) joined forces to make the album New
Multitudes, in which they created new music for a collection of previously unpublished lyrics by Woody Guthrie. In
2012, wholly solo work arrived in the form of the quickly recorded Little Raider EP and later the full length album
Scorpion, an intensely lonely collection of spare songs and solitary moods. Both recordings were released on
Johnson's own indie imprint Undertow Music. To support Scorpion, Johnson embarked on a tour in the fall of 2012 that
included both traditional club settings as well as more intimate living room shows in the houses of various fans and
supporters. When not busy with his seemingly non-stop schedule as a musician, Johnson is also a visual artist; his
paintings have appeared on the covers of Centro-Matic's albums, and he's shown a series of baseball-inspired pieces
in special themed exhibits.
Album Review - from allmusic
Alt-country figurehead Will Johnson has come to be known for his ceaseless output, with his band Centro-Matic, under
his own name, and with any number of side projects. Though Scorpion is Johnson's first entirely solo work since
2004's Vultures Await, he was anything but dormant in the eight years between, churning out collaborations with Jay
Farrar, Anders Parker, Yim Yames, and Jason Molina, among others. Scorpion is very much a solitary affair, however.
The mood is thick and pensive throughout, and the instrumentation spare and drifting, most songs relying on a single
focal instrument and subtle shifts in production to paint the picture around Johnson's moody vocalizations.
Scorpion's songs deal almost entirely in empty skies and lonely surroundings, augmenting traditional acoustic
instruments with wild delay tones or alien textures. "It Goes Away So Fast" slowly devolves from muted harmonies
into a crescendo of space echo and interwoven lines of fuzzed-out guitar and melodica. The loosely structured
"Riding from Within" buries Johnson's dour voice under a rush of unhinged acoustic folk instruments, while songs
like "Truss of Ten" and "Blackest Sparrow/Darkest Night" hang more traditional arrangements on sad-hearted melodies,
with the vocals in the forefront of the mix. There's an improvisational feel to the album, a sense that whoever's
narrating these deep tales is more resigned than relaxed. This sense of resignation means even the more emphatically
arranged songs on Scorpion, like the lush "Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones)" and album opener "You Will Be Here,
Mine," feel less meticulously arranged and more like slowly patched together testaments to broken times, moments of
silent solitude, or lonely late-night confessions. The record is a downer, to be sure, but it's an incredibly made
downer, and deserves a place among the canon of depressive monuments to loneliness that includes Neil Young's On the
Beach, Sparklehorse's It's a Wonderful Life, and Richard Buckner's Since. Like those albums, Scorpion isn't an album
for the good times, but its portrayal of dark days is gorgeous. It's a picturesque scene of some heartbroken desert
landscape at twilight or the soundtrack for the days that come long after the initial devastation of a bad breakup
but still a ways away from feeling better about it.
Track Listing
1. You Will Be Here, Mine
2. Rosanky
3. Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones)
4. Blackest Sparrow/Darkest Night
5. It Goes Away So Fast
6. The Scorpion
7. Riding from Within
8. Winter Screen Four
9. Truss of Ten
10. Vehicular and True
I double dog dare ya
the whole album without nodding off
nothing close to a like for me
the clip, so stupid
dude finished that drink each time he tipped it
not my thing but it may be yours
1.0 from me and a converted 2.4 from the pros at allmusic
from the album - You Will Be Here, Mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrarWj7yW6k
released Sept 11th, 2012
Bio - from allmusic
Will Johnson is one of the most prolific artists in American indie rock; while he's best known as the leader of the
group Centro-Matic, he also fronts the band South San Gabriel, has recorded a number of solo projects, and has
served as a sideman and producer for a handful of other noted acts, and he's released close to 40 records with his
various ensembles outside of the dozens of compilations that have included his work. Johnson was born in Kennett,
Missouri in 1971, and he developed a passion for rock & roll as a teenager, going so far to learn the guitar, bass,
and drums parts to two of his favorite albums, the Replacements' Let It Be and Soul Asylum's Hang Time. After
completing high school, Johnson relocated to Denton, Texas to attend the University of North Texas, where he took a
double major in English and elementary education. Johnson began making a name for himself as a drummer, and in 1991
he joined a Dallas-based band called Funland. Funland were successful enough that Johnson quit school for a while to
keep up their schedule, and they were briefly signed to Arista Records, who released the EP Sweetness in 1995.
Within a few months of the record's release, Johnson had returned to Denton to complete his degree, and he began
recording moody solo compositions on a four-track cassette machine. He credited the material to "The Centro-Matic
Band," and his early self-released cassette albums began attracting positive attention in the local press. By 1996,
the first proper Centro-Matic album, Redo the Stacks, had appeared, and the solo project had grown into a proper
band with Mark Hedman on bass, drummer Matt Pence, and Scott Danborn on bass and keyboards. Centro-Matic released
two cassette-only collections, four 7" singles, two EPs, and six albums between 1996 and 2001, and the group earned
a passionate cult following for their richly evocative music and Johnson's powerful, literate songs. In 2002,
Johnson released his first solo album, Murder of Tides, and in 2003 he debuted South San Gabriel, which featured the
same musicians as Centro-Matic but offered a more measured and contemplative musical approach. As both Centro-Matic
and South San Gabriel continued to receive acclaim from critics and fans, Johnson began collaborating with a growing
number of artists. He played guitar with Anders Parker's band Varnaline, drummed with Jay Farrar's Son Volt, formed
the Undertow Orchestra with David Bazan, Vic Chesnutt, and Mark Eitzel, and toured with the all-star indie-folk
ensemble Monsters of Folk. Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers, an avowed Centro-Matic fan, recruited Johnson to
sing backing vocals on the band's 2008 album Brighter Than Creation's Dark, and when Hood released his 2009 solo
effort Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs), Johnson appeared on the record and toured in Hood's live band. In
2011, after Centro-Matic released the album Candidate Waltz, Johnson was invited to collaborate in a special
project; Johnson, Farrar, Parker, and Yim Yames (of My Morning Jacket) joined forces to make the album New
Multitudes, in which they created new music for a collection of previously unpublished lyrics by Woody Guthrie. In
2012, wholly solo work arrived in the form of the quickly recorded Little Raider EP and later the full length album
Scorpion, an intensely lonely collection of spare songs and solitary moods. Both recordings were released on
Johnson's own indie imprint Undertow Music. To support Scorpion, Johnson embarked on a tour in the fall of 2012 that
included both traditional club settings as well as more intimate living room shows in the houses of various fans and
supporters. When not busy with his seemingly non-stop schedule as a musician, Johnson is also a visual artist; his
paintings have appeared on the covers of Centro-Matic's albums, and he's shown a series of baseball-inspired pieces
in special themed exhibits.
Album Review - from allmusic
Alt-country figurehead Will Johnson has come to be known for his ceaseless output, with his band Centro-Matic, under
his own name, and with any number of side projects. Though Scorpion is Johnson's first entirely solo work since
2004's Vultures Await, he was anything but dormant in the eight years between, churning out collaborations with Jay
Farrar, Anders Parker, Yim Yames, and Jason Molina, among others. Scorpion is very much a solitary affair, however.
The mood is thick and pensive throughout, and the instrumentation spare and drifting, most songs relying on a single
focal instrument and subtle shifts in production to paint the picture around Johnson's moody vocalizations.
Scorpion's songs deal almost entirely in empty skies and lonely surroundings, augmenting traditional acoustic
instruments with wild delay tones or alien textures. "It Goes Away So Fast" slowly devolves from muted harmonies
into a crescendo of space echo and interwoven lines of fuzzed-out guitar and melodica. The loosely structured
"Riding from Within" buries Johnson's dour voice under a rush of unhinged acoustic folk instruments, while songs
like "Truss of Ten" and "Blackest Sparrow/Darkest Night" hang more traditional arrangements on sad-hearted melodies,
with the vocals in the forefront of the mix. There's an improvisational feel to the album, a sense that whoever's
narrating these deep tales is more resigned than relaxed. This sense of resignation means even the more emphatically
arranged songs on Scorpion, like the lush "Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones)" and album opener "You Will Be Here,
Mine," feel less meticulously arranged and more like slowly patched together testaments to broken times, moments of
silent solitude, or lonely late-night confessions. The record is a downer, to be sure, but it's an incredibly made
downer, and deserves a place among the canon of depressive monuments to loneliness that includes Neil Young's On the
Beach, Sparklehorse's It's a Wonderful Life, and Richard Buckner's Since. Like those albums, Scorpion isn't an album
for the good times, but its portrayal of dark days is gorgeous. It's a picturesque scene of some heartbroken desert
landscape at twilight or the soundtrack for the days that come long after the initial devastation of a bad breakup
but still a ways away from feeling better about it.
Track Listing
1. You Will Be Here, Mine
2. Rosanky
3. Bloodkin Push (Forget the Ones)
4. Blackest Sparrow/Darkest Night
5. It Goes Away So Fast
6. The Scorpion
7. Riding from Within
8. Winter Screen Four
9. Truss of Ten
10. Vehicular and True
